It has probably been two years since I read In the Miso Soup, which I consider more than just Ryu Murakami’s flagship novel, but one of the few pieces of literature that I still draw on regularly when I want to ush and gush about fiction. I can still conjure what it feels like to [...]
About a month ago I stumbled on a sidewalk sale where, between cheese curd vendors, a 5-year-old magician with a stunning vocabulary, and hippies juggling sticks, I found some castoffs from the public library: $1 for trade paper; $0.50 for mass market. I was in a rush. There was an Italian sausage calling my name [...]
I drank the Jodi Chromey Kool-Aid and readers, it was delicious. As anyone who has ever lurked the hallowed halls of Minnesota Reads knows, when Jodi likes something — I mean REALLY likes something — she damn near holds her very own Fourth of July celebration for that thing. Under these circumstances, I tend to [...]
I made a rookie error and poor, poor Vendela Vida’s novel The Lovers is the innocent victim. It all started when I fell madly in love with Jennifer Egan’s book A Visit from the Goon Squad. I lovingly caressed the cover, made kissy faces at it, considered starting from scratch and rereading it immediately. I [...]
There is a scene in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, when an aged and plumped and be-cancer-ed rock and roll star named Bosco is pitching an idea to his publicist: He wants to tour again in support of his album “A to B.” A suicide tour. He doesn’t want to fade away, [...]
Well. Now Doug Dorst is just showing off. The relative newbie to the world of book glue’s new collection of short stories The Surf Guru, is so fun, so clever, and so so exciting that it will make people who play with words drool. Reading his series of twelve tales is like watching a contortionist [...]
I am going to write something here that applies to Sloane Crosley and only Sloane Crosley, and God help us all — please don’t let anyone else take this bit of advice and apply it: Sloane, you need to write more about your personal life. Dates and dudes. Relationships that lean horizontal. Getting dumped and [...]
Gary Shteyngart’s fuckability levels must be off the chart right now. If he were to walk past a credit pole, numbers that rival elite college standard SAT scores would blink in his wake. He might even be considered a candidate for eternal life, according to the Post Human Services division of the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation — [...]
I fell in love with Belinda Carlisle in the back of a clunky brown passenger van in the summer of 1987, my walkman spinning the cassette of her debut solo album, “Belinda.” On the cover, the most beautiful woman in the world was dressed in all black against a Hubba Bubba pink backdrop, her bob [...]
All is well with the emo, Bright Eyes-bleeding couple Bella and Edward when Eclipse, the third book of Stephenie Meyer’s uber-sensitivo contemporary goth novel opens. This one is more of a bosom clutching, fainting spells romance than the previous book in the series, New Moon. The young love birds are following a period of crossed [...]
Interesting Stuff
Recent Comments